• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.553-561
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• 2012

Existing energy sources convert chemical energy into mechanical energy, while fuel cell directly generates electricity through an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Therefore, it has a lot of strong points such as high efficiency, zero emission, and etc. In addition, with the development of hydrogen preservation technique, some companies have been researching and releasing portable fuel cell power packs for specific applications like military equipment, automobile, and so on. However, there are some drawbacks to the fuel cell, high cost and slow dynamic response. In order to compensate these weak points, auxiliary energy storages could be applied to the fuel cell system. In this paper, the optimum structure for a 150W portable fuel cell power pack with a battery pack is selected considering the specification of the system, and the design process of main parts is described in detail. Here, main objectives are compact size, simple control, high efficiency, and low cost. Then, an automatic mode change algorithm, which converts the operating mode depending on the states of fuel cell stack, battery pack, and load, is introduced. Finally, performance of the designed prototype using the automatic mode change control is verified through experiments.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.494-502
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• 2011

Bimodal tram is designed to run on a dedicated path in automatic mode using a magnetic track system in order to realize a combination of the accessibility of a bus and the constant regularity of a railroad. This paper presents design and test results of the series hybrid propulsion system of the bimodal tram on both test track and public road, which uses CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) engine and Lithium polymer battery pack. This paper describes the real-time data measuring equipment for the series hybrid propulsion system of the bimodal tram. Using this measurement equipment, the performance of the prototype vehicle's driving on test track and public road was verified and the fuel consumption and the efficiency of CNG engine have been investigated.